


Whence Came Thy Dazzling Hue

by grumkin_snark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 16:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14139597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumkin_snark/pseuds/grumkin_snark
Summary: For as long as he can remember, she’s worn flowers in her hair.





	Whence Came Thy Dazzling Hue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amaati](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amaati/gifts).



> Based on [this](https://amaati.tumblr.com/post/172205632240/your-elia-art-is-gorgeous-i-love-the-orange) headcanon.

For as long as he can remember, she’s worn flowers in her hair. It had been her father who started the practice, she’d told him, plucking whatever blooms happened to catch his eye as he performed his daily walk of the grounds with the Princess. Jasmine had been trellised through her hair the day he met her, like tiny bursts of starlight in the night sky.

When she falls ill, it becomes his pastime to remove the flowers at the end of the day. He’d come to check on her, and she’d asked him if he could please take them out for she didn’t want to crush them and she was too weak to do it herself. He’d obliged, of course, had gently pulled each one from her dark strands and placed them on the table beside her bed in case she wanted to press them later. Being so close to her,  _intimately_  close, had been the first time it occurred to him that maybe he didn’t think of her as  _just_  a friend, as  _just_  a princess. He hadn’t been able to sleep a wink that night.

He hadn’t had long to dwell, though. Four days hence when she’d recovered, she went to his chambers to thank him. She’d pecked him on the cheek, nothing more—but she hadn’t moved away afterwards, and then suddenly she was kissing him on the lips, her passion making up for their shared inexperience. She’d blushed pink as a desert rose when she realized what she’d done, and tried to dart off in mortification. He couldn’t have said a word if his life depended on it, so dumbstruck was he, but what he  _could_  do was kiss her, and he did.

They’d never looked back.

The memories of their youth have been driven into painful living color since her marriage, since they moved to Dragonstone where the opportunities to try to forget how deeply he’d loved her—how deeply he  _still_  loves her—are few and far between. None perhaps more so than when he notices magnolias strewn through her hair the morning after Rhaegar departs for Summerhall. The old magnolia tree in Aegon’s Garden had been planted long ago as a wedding gift from Queen Naerys to her son and Princess Mariah, but Arthur hasn’t known it to bloom in years.

Elia is a  _vision_ , and he wonders how anyone could possibly think otherwise.

He is set to guard her chambers that evening, and as always he asks if she requires anything before she retires. He should avert his eyes when he sees she’s wearing only her bedgown, but there’s no one around and besides, he’s seen her in less.

“I do need something from you, as it happens,” she says. There is an impish quirk to her lips that makes his mouth go dry. “It seems I forgot to ask Ashara to remove these flowers from my hair. Will you help me?”

She’s as healthy as can be, more than capable of doing this herself, but he has been so utterly starved of being near her that he accepts without hesitation. If anyone came by, the explanation would be perfectly innocent. A friend helping out instead of the princess having to rouse any of her ladies. Still, he inches the door shut until it’s only barely ajar. She sits on the chair at her vanity, and with practiced hands he sets to work.

He drags it out as long as he’s able, talking to her at length and deigning to remove all the pins from her chignon as well as the flowers until her hair cascades down her back in loose curls. The magnolias have left their scent behind, and he drowns in it. He drowns in  _her_. He so yearns to touch her, to loosen the sash of her bedgown and have her laid bare before him. To stand at her mercy as she slowly removes his armor piece by agonizing piece until he’s positively  _aching_  for her.

Or even to just sleep beside her, hold her against his chest and feel her heart beat in time with his, the way it used to be. Softly kiss her awake and make love to her as the first rays of sunlight splash across the room.

But he can’t, he knows he can’t. Not anymore. He lets himself dip his fingers beneath the neckline of her gown, enough to be improper yet far less than what he wants. Less than what they  _both_  want, judging by the way her breath stutters.

“All done,” he murmurs in her ear. She shivers, and when she looks at him he sees the same longing in her eyes as he feels every moment of every day.

“Thank you.” It comes out as nothing more than a whisper.

“I would gladly do so again.”

“I think I shall hold you to that.”

He knows if he stays a minute longer he won’t be able to force himself to leave, and so he drinks in what he can of her and chastely kisses her hand. “Sleep well, princess.”

She reaches up and runs her fingertips along his jaw, light as a feather. “And you, my gallant knight.”


End file.
